After a tragedy, the anti-gaming voices always get louder

The usual suspects come out of the woodwork to use this opportunity to attack …

Talking about the Virginia Tech shootings in a gaming journal post is probably just adding more fuel to the fire; everyone is looking to draw a connection between gaming and the terrible act we've been hearing about on the news since Monday. We know that Jack Thompson has opened his flap on the subject, but we're used to his tasteless attempts to sell books by now. He's becoming easy to ignore, and his cases are costing tax payers money after they fail. I doubt he has many friends left that can do anything except give him camera-time.

DR. PHIL: Well, Larry, every situation is different… The question really is can we spot them. And the problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high.

Whenever anyone tells you to believe something with little to no proof because of "common sense" your BS meter should instantly go off. Of course, gaming is finding an odd defender in none other than Rush Limbaugh. Knock me over with a feather.

Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that… it may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers…

People have a tough time accepting a relatively simple explanation for something of this scale. But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?

If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this. You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act. But if you want to start blaming the video games, this guy was this or that, weeeeell, then you've gotta maybe talk about banning them because that’s the same tack that's taken with guns.

Since when is Mr. Limbaugh the voice of reason?

I think it's sick that we're seeing people push their political agenda this soon after the events at Virginia Tech. I knew it was coming, but it's still sad to see.